Archive for
February, 2011

I took this photo a few days ago when I was still feeling under the weather (two weeks of sick, dear reader — can you believe it?!) With the unseasonable warmth most of the white stuff is gone today, but despite the occasional burst of sun the clouds are still hanging in the air.

Please toss your disused cups of flavoured filth in the trash. Just because your pay through the nose for your “coffee” and your Macintosh says you’re special that doesn’t make it so. At least not in the traditional sense. Oh, and maybe consider making a Facebook profile somewhere other than in your mind before advertising it; just a suggestion.

Whenever I tell people I “do Flash” for a living, I get the inevitable blank stare, sometimes accompanied by a nod that suggests they might be imagining me walking down the street with nothing but a long overcoat and an evil grin.

While this may be true in my off hours, what I get paid for is considerably different:

You might recognize this as Mahjongg, or rather, a bastardized version of something closer to a memory/matching game rather than poker, which is what traditional Mahjongg is like. It’s what I’ve been slapping together over the past couple of weeks for Corus’ W Network to replace their existing game.

There’s more work to be done; this would be considered a pre-alpha version … playable but with some big pieces missing. After that it goes into alpha in which everything’s done and I test for hours and hours under the pretense of “work”. Then it’s in beta where the in-house testers and I exchange heated words and potentially fists over what constitutes “features”. After that it’s released to the public, exposed to the big wide world, just like my dangly trench coat buddy.

I like a good protest as much as the next guy, and I’m definitely not above showing my support for the demonstrators when I think they have a point to make, but sometimes I have to question what they’re trying to achieve. Or if they bothered to give any thought to what they’re doing.

Last time I got to — nay, was encouraged to — watch TV at work was when I was beating up keyboards at CTV. I never took advantage of it then, but then again, I wasn’t at the professional level I’m at now. I don’t see anyone else in their skivvies, brandishing beer, and being thus deeply involved in their employer’s operation, but Corus broadcasts 36 channels over its in-house network and I’ll be damned if I don’t strive to be a model employee this time around!